Oi no

Got an email from my school the other day, asking if I would like to take a survey.  I still think they may have a few wires crossed, as I, um, am in a completely different STATE, not to mention that I GRADUATED, but hey, I thought, what the heck.

The survey was from some Professional and Technical Communication student asking if I thought it would be a good idea to provide every student at the school with a supported by your tuition! free technogimmick iPad, under the pretension that it would enhance your studies.

What an absolutely abominably horrible idea.

This person obviously isn't an engineering student.  An electronic textbook would be great for classes with a lot of story-like reading--history and literature and such.  But when you use your textbooks as reference material--look at the graph on page 450 and with the number you get off of it go to the chart on page 300 to get the factor you need to insert into the equation listed on page 295--it just DOESN'T WORK in ebook form.  Then there's the unfortunate fact that an iPad is an Apple product, whereas nearly all of the software that is used for engineering runs on Windows.  Then there's the also unfortunate fact that none of said software would run on a tablet anyway.  Then there's the additional unfortunate fact that an iPad needs a real computer to plug into if you use it, which eliminates the "providing for the poor" aspect that I'm sure this bleeding heart PTC major has in mind.  And for five hundred bucks you could buy every student a licensed copy of Microsoft Office, AutoCAD, Solid Works, and MATLAB. 

But never mind me, I hate to intrude on your bubble of awesomeness.

And lordy I'm glad I'm out of school, even if job prospects are grim.